Solid Ground
by peanutbutterer
Summary: He counts to ten and back down to one and still can't properly breathe. [tag to 5x19, "Spoils of War"]


He scrubs his hand over his face and looks down at his feet. His shoes are still dusty from the desert. He closes his eyes when he starts to see sand rise up from the ground like a flood - blinks back the vision before it pulls him under. He counts to ten and back down to one and still can't properly breathe.

The door in front of him opens and Kensi's there, face pink from scrubbing, eyes like big, empty windows. "Are you," she says so softly he almost doesn't hear it. "Were you going to knock?"

He coughs and wills his lungs to cooperate. "I uh, yeah, I mean - I was thinking about it, but I didn't want - am I bothering you? Would you like to be - I mean, I figured you might not be sleeping since you just had a fifteen hour nap but probably you still need a ton of sleep so," he gestures vaguely behind him to where his car is parked, "I can go. I can come back tomorrow. Bring some donuts or -"

She gives her head the barest of shakes and he stops.

"Okay, well." He doesn't know if he's being selfish - if it's just him that needs this. He doesn't know if the barely restrained urge to wrap her up and never let her go is because he can't bear the thought of not touching her or if he truly believes she needs to be touched. Or maybe he does know and that's why his feet are stuck in imagined sand and he never got up the courage to raise his hand and knock.

"Deeks, come in."

He exhales as the sand falls away, and he follows her inside.

* * *

She immediately burrows into a Kensi-shaped hole in the couch, a big, fluffy comforter enveloping her with ease. He remembers the airplane, how it was him that was wrapped all around her. How he spent half a day with her pressed into him, feeling her breath on his skin. The ache to feel it again is fierce.

Light from the television is flickering across her face but he's sure she hasn't watched a minute of it. There are no beer bottles or food containers on the coffee table in front of her and he thinks back to the mess, to waiting for her to lift her fork to her mouth and never seeing it happen.

"Can I get you something, Kens?"

She blinks up at him.

"Crackers? Pop tarts? You've still got some ice cream in your freezer. I could run to the store and pick up something - or order a pizza? Anything?"

She shakes her head.

"Let me at least get you some water?"

She doesn't answer, but it wasn't really a question anyway. He was already almost to the refrigerator before the words left his mouth. He grabs a cold water and twists off the cap, handing it to Kensi as he returns to the living room. She takes it absently and places it on the table in front of her without taking a sip.

They didn't talk on the plane. He tried once, sort of, but didn't push. She was sleepy and she was warm and she was _whole_ and that's all he needed. But now - he still needs the rest. He needs to tell her things; he needs to hear her say things.

He needs to know what happened her. He needs to know what she went through and how she came out on the other side. He needs to know because he's spent the last two days imagining it in gruesome detail and the images keep spinning around in his mind - pictures of Kensi pale and bloody and bruised and battered and the sound of her crying and the echoes of her screams and enveloping darkness and endless pain and he thinks that maybe if he knew, if he could just have one picture, one tangible thread then maybe he'd be sane again. If he knew then maybe he could get through it like she got through it and they'd come out together on the other side.

He's got to get to the other side.

"Kensi," he starts and everything he's feeling must bleed into that one word, must be written in neon letters across his face because she knows exactly what he's going to say.

"I don't want to talk about it," she says, eyes forward and unseeing. "Please don't make me."

All the things he needs to know and all the things he needs to say compact in his throat and he swallows them down. They settle in his gut and he finds a way to breathe around them - a way to exist with them knotted inside.

"I won't," he promises, coming to his knees in front of her. "God, Kens, I won't. I won't make you do anything."

Tears build up in her eyes and slowly spill over, but her expression doesn't change.

"I'd never," he reaches up and finds her hands, fisted in the comforter. He puts his on top of hers. "I'd _never_."

He breath hitches and the tears come faster.

The knot inside him swells and he pushes it down deeper. "I'm here," he tells her. "You're here."

She looks at him then, eyes finally seeing.

"I'm here," he repeats. "You're here."

Her hands twist in his, grasping for some sort of hold. Their fingers tangle but it isn't enough.

He pushes off the floor and reaches for her as she falls into him, crashing together, clinging with every ounce of strength they have left.

"I'm here," he says into her hair. "You're here."

She digs her fingers into his back, her words barely intelligible as she sobs into his shoulder. "Oh god, Deeks."

"We're here," he promises. "Right here."


End file.
